Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in FYI.
Didn’t y’all know?
Although I was not born and bred here, in the past 4 years or so I have come to love the darling little state of Georgia. I came here on January 22nd of 2017. I have lived in a few different and diverse cities since then such as Waco and Tallapoosa before finally settling down in Cedartown. A small, tight-knit town full of churches, community centers, and charm.
By Rain Dayze5 years ago in FYI
Dream City
Carla Hall stepped out into deep indigo, that never-quite pitch that hovers until dawn. It’s as if the planet spots its head, never quite taking her eye off the sun. Or maybe the world revolves around this one city. Some Angeleno’s would certainly thrill to believe that. Others hold it in their bones as absolute truth. But night falls here. And Carla tumbles into it. Down from the rooftop bar with its buzzing heated lamps and six tops of bros, one floor leaked reggaeton into the stairwell. The next pulsed out top 40 hip hop. Until finally, Carla slithers through sweaty, matted clusters, ebbing and cresting under the incantation of some anonymous pop karaoke. Two men cowering from the approach of middle age lob crass anecdotes overhead as she pinches through the dried urine miasma of the doorway. They are a pair of good midwestern boys flexing their edge at one another in their uniforms of distressed denim and pomade tousled hair.
By E. M. Walker5 years ago in FYI
DARKSIDE of FACEBOOK
Everything That Glitters Isn't Gold "We’re doing a great job of 'canceling' the master of leverage. That’s how Zuckerberg REALLY became wealthy and worth $101B. Facebook/Twitter may be the champion of ‘Cancel Culture’, but it’s in our power to 'cancel' our dependency of those platforms. I'm a man of integrity; so with me, it’s not about having something to hide. It’s about a business and its CEO's lack of integrity. Facebook has been selling our 'browsing history', 'interests', 'I. P. Addresses', 'Network of Family', and every website you're able to log into by clicking 'LOG-IN WITH YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT' — He's been doing it without our consent. I don't take that lightly. There's a difference between CUSTOMIZING YOUR BROWSING EXPERIENCE and SELLING YOUR USERS BROWSING EXPERIENCE TO A BACKGROUND ENTITY THAT BECOMES THE ALL-SEEING-EYE." - R. L. Laster
By R. L. LASTER5 years ago in FYI
The Perfect Icebreaker
If I Hadn't Met You, such a beautiful show with an intensely melancholic ending. The sense of despair is seated from the very first episode and prevails through to the very end. The highs, the lows, the bad and good are all reminiscent of how life isn't perfect, how it could go wrong at any turn. A very sobering thing to consider and calls the viewer to not take life nor loved ones for granted. It had me crying, smiling, hopeful and unsure of anything just as much as the protagonist of the show. It's been a long time since I've watched it If I'm going to be truthful, so most of the details are blurry, however, the emotions I felt are still imprinted in my mind.
By April Perez5 years ago in FYI
A Figure Still Hidden
Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson. After the release of Hidden Figures in 2016, these women became household names across our nation. They received well-deserved recognition as our country finally acknowledged the women of color that advanced space travel.
By Olivia L. Dobbs5 years ago in FYI
"It's Only Forever"
The movie “Labyrinth” is one of the greatest movies in the genre of fantasy. Filmed in 1986 and directed by Jim Henson “Labyrinth” has gained a huge cult following. The popularity of the movie is not just claimed by Jim Henson fans but also by David Bowie fans. It’s the type of movie that you can watch over and over as a child and continues to be a favorite through adulthood.
By Kristen Renee5 years ago in FYI
The reason we divide up our days into two sets of twelve.
As a great philosopher of our time put it, “Time is a valuable thing, Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings, Watch it count down to the end of the day, The clock ticks life away.” But why is time counted the way it is--the day first divided by two (AM and PM) then twelve (hours) then sixty (minutes) and then sixty again (seconds). It’s all so needlessly complicated. Why don’t we have a nice metric style system where everything is divisible by ten? To understand how we came to our current system of timekeeping we need to first ask this question:
By Buck Hardcastle5 years ago in FYI
Know It All
Growing up, I was called a know-it-all. In fact, for my 15th birthday, my dad got me a tee-shirt that said, "Feel free to ask me anything, I've reached the age, where I know it all." I would hope, after almost 30 years, I have grown out of that attitude of conceit, but considering the arguments I still have with the man-child husband, it is a problem I still struggle with. I find it difficult to just sit silently when hearing someone talk about, well, anything, that I have any knowledge about. I'm quick to interject a random factoid, or argue the case when someone states a fact that I object with; not based on any confirmed research, mind you - I simply just know it. Drives people crazy. I don't mean to be so aggressive; blame it my zodiac. The Aries in me despises to submit defeat and likes to be at the center of attention. "Hey, look at me! See what I can do!" Mother tells me I was a handful as a child; even at a small age, I knew how to command attention. Growing up in Alaska meant you found any ways possible to entertain yourself, and storytelling was one of my favorite things to do. Once during a 2nd or 3rd- grade recess, I commenced telling a group of younger kids that the woods surrounding our Christian school were filled with witches and demons, and on days that it rained, when the mist hung like spider webs in the blue spruce branches, you could hear them, pattering through the heavily mossed forest, approaching the fence that separated the trees from our playground, plotting which child to grab. On Kodiak Island, the smell of petrichor was always near, since it rained nearly every day. (see what I did there - I snuck in another bit of uncommon knowledge: that ozone-type smell of rain just before it arrives actually has a name. Petrichor). Needless to say, my mom got called to the school for that one. Alaska was a fantastic place to be a kid. The most amazing landscapes you could ever imagine were all around you; everywhere your eyes landed, was like an eyegasm. If that is not a real thing, it should be, because truly, your senses explode with overload at the colors and pristine beauty above and below. And the wildlife...I challenge you to find another place where a simple day trip into the woods to go ice skating during the winter, could produce 5 or more different species of wild critters. Speaking of critters and Alaska, did you know that the willow ptarmigan is its state bird? I think it is pretty cool that a group of about 6000 school kids had the say in that choice; they voted it to be and sent their choice to the Territory Legislature BEFORE Alaska was even given the title of 49th state in the USA. Another interesting bird factoid that I already know, having had lived in Alaska, is the puffin, (those cute little black and white birds with orange beaks that float in the ocean), lay eggs that hatch to become baby pufflings. Say it with me "pufflings". See, I'm loaded with a plethora of useless helpful information. I can cook up a bunch of stuff you may already know, but I bet some of it will be new. Speaking of cooking, you know those tall, white chef hats, usually worn by "professional" chefs? I use that term lightly these days, however, in this case, I'm referring to the actual pleated hat worn by pros. Those random folds actually serve a purpose - or they used to. Each fold on a chef's hat represents their level of experience; how many different ways they could cook an egg. I guess there are more ways to cook eggs than frying, scramble, poach or steam... Thanks to Google, anyone with access to a computer can type in "ways to cook eggs" and figure it out. Computers. If you were born anytime after 1990, having a computer in your house probably wasn't that big of a deal; a lot of people started buying them as prices came down. Did you know in 1977, the Apple II launched a personal computer that sold for about $1300.00 USD (today, that would be over $5000.oo USD), and that bad boy was considered by most, to be the first widely successful PC (personal computer). Nowadays, you can get a decent laptop for under $400.00 USD. When I was in high school, in the late 1990s, I could not 'Google' my research papers; I had to actually have my mom drive me to a brick -and- mortar building (called a library, for you tech-spoiled youngsters), to look up information. My senior year, I had to do a report on Scotland, so I had my mom drop me off after school at the library for a few hours so I could pull every book I could find on "Scotland". In doing so, I learned this little nugget - the unicorn is Scotland's national animal. Seriously. The unicorn stands for purity, innocence, as well as strength and its presence of importance goes way back to Celtic mythology. So far as national animals go, Scotland wins, in my book. All animals are pretty awesome. I mean, have you seen how many You Tube videos involving dogs and cats, alone, exist? Personally, I never get tired of seeing cats getting scared by plastic bags that wind up around their tails, and doing terrified zoomies throughout the house. I laugh so hard I cry at these videos. This topic leads me to insert my last bit of uncommon info - cats can be allergic to humans. I found that to be interesting while I was searching the web for cool bits of data. So, I leave you, reader, with this bit of wisdom: no matter how much knowledge you 'google', or how many bits of information you pick up online, know that only about 8% of it is actually available on the internet. Books, journals, and written text still have much to teach us, if we are just willing to look.
By Saundra M Bobbish - Dyer5 years ago in FYI
6 Women in History Who Adopted Male Personas
These women for a variety of reasons decided to adopt a male persona and (with one exception) dressed as and pretended to be men, often fooling their contemporaries. Some only did this for a short period, while others did this for their entire lives.
By Scarlett Callohan5 years ago in FYI
Did You Know Michigan Won the UP in a War With Ohio?. Top Story - March 2021.
That's right, friends, in 1835, the Michigan Territory went to war with the state of Ohio. One could make the argument that the hostility continues to this day, but the conflict was officially over in 1836.
By Crysta Coburn5 years ago in FYI
Nike Took a Murderer’s Last Words and Turned It Into a Simple Life Lesson
“In a plain T-shirt with a bag over his head, [Gary] Gilmore was strapped into a chair, waiting for a firing squad to execute him at Utah State Prison. It was the morning of Jan. 17, 1977, and Gilmore, convicted of murdering a gas station employee and motel manager in Utah the year before, was to become the first person in the United States to be executed in nearly a decade.” — Washington Post
By Alice Vuong5 years ago in FYI
